The cultural evolution of witchcraft beliefs

IF 3 1区 心理学 Q1 BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES Evolution and Human Behavior Pub Date : 2024-07-31 DOI:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2024.106610
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Abstract

Witchcraft beliefs are historically and geographically widespread, but little is known about the cultural inheritance processes that may explain their variation between populations. A core component of witchcraft belief is that certain people (‘witches’) are thought to harm others using supernatural means. Various traits, which we refer to as the ‘witchcraft phenotype’ accompany these beliefs. Some can be classified as ‘symbolic culture’, including ideas about the typical behaviour of witches and concepts such as familiars (witches' magical helpers), and demographic traits such as the age and sex of those likely to be accused. We conducted an exploratory study of the cultural evolution of 31 witchcraft traits to examine their inferred ancestry and associations with historic population movements. We coded a dataset from ethnographic accounts of Bantu and Bantoid-speaking societies in sub-Saharan Africa (N = 84) and analysed it using phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs). Our results estimate that while some traits, such as an ordeal to test for witchcraft, have deep history, others, such as accusations of children, may have evolved more recently, or are limited to specific clusters of societies. Demographic and symbolic cultural traits do not typically co-evolve. Our findings suggest traits have different transmission patterns, and these may result from benefits they provide or from universal psychological mechanisms that produce their recurrent evolution.

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巫术信仰的文化演变
巫术信仰在历史上和地理上都很普遍,但人们对其文化传承过程却知之甚少,而这种文化传承过程可以解释不同人群之间的巫术信仰差异。巫术信仰的核心内容是认为某些人("女巫")会使用超自然手段伤害他人。伴随这些信仰而来的是各种特征,我们称之为 "巫术表型"。其中一些可以归类为 "符号文化",包括对女巫典型行为的看法和诸如 "家人"(女巫的魔法帮手)等概念,以及人口统计学特征,如可能被指控者的年龄和性别。我们对 31 种巫术特征的文化演变进行了探索性研究,以考察这些特征的推断祖先以及与历史上人口迁移的关联。我们对撒哈拉以南非洲班图人和班图语社会的人种学描述(=84)进行了编码,并使用系统发育比较方法(PCMs)对其进行了分析。我们的结果估计,虽然某些特征(如测试巫术的折磨)具有深远的历史,但其他特征(如对儿童的指控)可能是最近才发展起来的,或仅限于特定的社会群组。人口特征和象征性文化特征通常不会共同进化。我们的研究结果表明,文化特征具有不同的传播模式,这可能是由于文化特征带来了不同的利益,也可能是由于普遍的心理机制导致了文化特征的反复演化。
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来源期刊
Evolution and Human Behavior
Evolution and Human Behavior 生物-行为科学
CiteScore
8.30
自引率
9.80%
发文量
62
审稿时长
82 days
期刊介绍: Evolution and Human Behavior is an interdisciplinary journal, presenting research reports and theory in which evolutionary perspectives are brought to bear on the study of human behavior. It is primarily a scientific journal, but submissions from scholars in the humanities are also encouraged. Papers reporting on theoretical and empirical work on other species will be welcome if their relevance to the human animal is apparent.
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